Page 28 of Blackwood

We get to the last door on the tour. My room. It’s gorgeous. Big windows. Light wood floors. Soft everything. The kind of bed you throw yourself into face-first and never leave.

But it’s the wall that hits me like a gut punch.

One whole side is a hand-painted mural.Razorback Stadium. Crimson and white roaring through the crowd. The bleachers are packed, the sky overhead a deep navy fading into twilight with stadium lights casting a golden glow over the field.

The Razorback mascot charges across the turf and flags wave high above the scoreboard. The colors bleed together, bold reds, smoky shadows, and that electric shimmer of game night magic. You can almost hear the band, the cheerleaders, the hogs being called.

It doesn’t just look like Arkansas. It feels like home.

“He remembered.” I whisper quietly.

Mr. Acronym just gives me a nod like he already knows.

I stand there staring at that wall as a small smile pulls at my mouth. He remembered. Of all the things he remembered this. My chest tightens and my eyes sting, one tear escaping down my cheek.

He didn’t just give me a room. He gave me a piece of home.

I find Zeke back in the main room, sitting at the long marble table, a half-empty mug in front of him. He looks up when I walk in, and for once he doesn’t joke.

“You good?” he asks, voice low and careful.

I nod, sliding into the chair across from him. “Yeah. Your psycho sniper and Mr. Acronym gave a killer tour. The mural was…” I stop and look out the window for a second. “Thanks, Zeke.”

“You’re welcome,” he says, a flicker behind his eyes. Then he leans forward, arms braced on the table. “You wanted answers,” he says as he shuts his laptop. “So here they are. No filters. No soft landings.”

Then, he just lets it all out. No warm-up. No sugar-coating. Just the whole damn thing, dropped on the table like a live grenade.

There are these Black Books of criminal families. Each one packed with the kind of dirt that could ruin legacies, bury empires, and start wars. Names, money trails, deals, everything the powerful want buried. Zeke has all of them.

But that’s not the point.

“They’re leverage,” he says, calm and sharp. “I’m not trying to run their world. I don’t give a shit about their empires. I’m using them to blow the real one to pieces.”

His eyes stay locked on mine. “The Black Books buy us access. Buy us protection. Buy us time. We squeeze them, and in return? They give us what we need—intel, logistics, clean routes, secure jobs.”

His voice drops, “They give us the worst of the worst, Bells. The ones who don’t even deserve to breathe.”

He doesn’t hesitate. “To find the people like Vince and Carlos. The traffickers. The buyers. The ghosts hiding in the cracks while everyone looks the other way.”

His jaw flexes. “The families that swear they’re not part of it, but they are. Every damn one of them.”

He leans back slightly, eyes still sharp. “I use the Black Book families to hunt worse ones.”

A pause. Just long enough to let it sink in. “As long as they play nice, I don’t release their books. They run small ops for us, intel, location drops, sometimes cleanups. Mostly muscle when we’re pulling kids out of bad situations.”

His voice drops to something more calculated. “I give ‘em just enough pieces of their books back to make them feel like they’re still in control.”

He shrugs, cold. “They’re not.”

From across the room, Mr. Acronym coughs under his breath.

Tex lets out a low laugh. “They think he’s generous.”

“Yeah, well… they think they’re getting their books back.” He leans forward, voice low. “I keep a copy.”

Then he shrugs again, casual as hell. “I’m not a fucking idiot.”

I stare at him. “You’re blackmailing crime families and running an underground war all while failing trig?”